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Over the weekend, we worked hard to finish the economic plan. Paul Begala had come to work in the White House a couple of weeks earlier, in large measure to help me explain what I was about to do in a way that was consistent with my campaign message of restoring opportunity for the middle class, something he UGG Boots Clearance believed most members of the economic team didnt care enough about. Begala felt that the entire team should stress three points: that deficit reduction is not an end in itself, but the means to achieve the real objectiveseconomic growth, more jobs, and higher incomes; that our plan represented a UGG Boots Clearance for women fundamental change in the way government had been working, ending the irresponsibility and unfairness of the past by asking the wealthy big corporations, and other special interests UGG boots outlet online that had benefited disproportionately from the tax cuts and deficits of the 1980s to pay their fair share of cleaning up the mess; and that we should not say we were asking people to sacrifice but to contribute to Americas renewal, a more patriotic and positive formulation. Begala wrote a memo containing his arguments and suggesting a new theme: Its NOT the deficit, stupid. Gene Sperling, Bob Reich, and George Stephanopoulos agreed with Paul, and were glad UGG boots outlet to have some inside help in arguing the message.
While all this was going on in public, we were struggling hard with some big questions. By far the largest was whether to include health-care reform along with the economic plan in the omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. There was a compelling argument for doing so: first, the budget, unlike all other legislation, isnt subject to the filibuster rule, UGG boots outlet the Senate practice that allows just forty-one senators to kill any bill by debating it to death, blocking a vote until the Senate has to move on to other business. Since the Senate had forty-four Republicans, the probability that they would at least try to filibuster health care was high.
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